Текст книги "East "

Автор книги: Эдит Патту

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Troll Queen

I STILL HAVE MY father's decree in my Book:

My daughter, the princess, has defied me and taken a high-born softskin. As punishment she shall forthwith be bound by my edict in this matter.

The boy stolen from the green lands shall be transformed into a white bear. He will reside in the castle carved into a mountain in the softskin land we call Suudella, and he will be given enough arts so that he may survive. A Huldre servant will also be supplied to serve him in the castle in the mountain.

Further, no request that he shall make of one of Huldre shall be denied. Except the request to be released from his enchantment. To be released from the enchantment, the white bear that was a softskin must abide by and satisfy a set of inviolable conditions.

These conditions shall be made known to him in their entirety.

So it has been decreed, and let this stand as an example to those who would defy their king.

Rose

IT WAS PITCH-BLACK in the room. I lay there in the darkness, my heart pounding and my limbs stiff, thinking desperately of what I could use as a weapon to protect myself. But the figure beside me in the bed stayed well away; there were at least two arm-lengths between us, so large was the bed. It briefly adjusted the covers and then lay still.

Of all the things that had happened to me during the past days, this was surely the strangest, the most confusing. At first I wondered if the white bear himself had climbed into bed with me. But though it was a large bed, it was not so large as to fit both a huge bear and myself, with two arm-lengths between. And as my pounding heart slowed, I reasoned that, based on the tilt of the mattress, the weight of whatever was beside me was not much heavier than my sister, although it was difficult to judge because of the distance between us and the softness of the mattress.

The minutes went by and there was no movement at all from the figure. At first my mind whirled frantically, trying to fathom who or what it was. The white lady or man from the kitchen? Or another such person of the castle whom I had yet to meet? Was it indeed human? Or beast? Perhaps an enchanted king or some kind of ghost or spirit. But gradually my thoughts ran out and my fear and confusion seemed to drain away. Amazingly, I slept.

When I awoke there was a dim light in the room. The door was partially open and the light was coming from the lamps lining the hall. I could see that there was no one in the bed next to me, and for a moment I wondered if the whole thing was a dream. But the bed linens on that side of the bed were rumpled, and I knew it wasn't.

There was food waiting for me when I went down to the red-couch room, but I was distracted as I ate the porridge and fruit. I could not stop thinking about the strange episode of the night before. I thought about it continually through the day, as I sat at the loom. I kept having the nagging feeling that, despite the evidence of my own senses, it had been the white bear that had lain beside me. I alternately dreaded and looked forward to going to bed that night. I dreaded it because the whole thing might happen again, and I looked forward to it also because it might indeed happen again and maybe this time would be explained. I resolved to keep the oil lamps in the bedroom lit.

The white bear did not visit while I wove, which, oddly enough, disappointed me. Though I doubted I would get an answer, I still yearned to ask him for an explanation of my night visitor.

When I was done weaving for the day, I ate a meal of meat stew and bread, and, taking the oil lamp with me, went up to bed. The lamps in the hall were no longer burning.

I washed, then put on my nightdress from home. I left one wall lamp lit as well as the handheld lamp, which I put on the table by the bed. I slipped under the covers and waited. I was determined to stay awake so that if the visitor came again I would be able to see its face.

I don't know how long I lay there, eyes wide open, waiting, but suddenly the lamps went out. I started to sit up; I was sure there had been oil enough in those lamps to last the night through. But I froze when moments later I felt something climb into the bed and pull up the covers. I briefly cursed the lack of a flint to relight the lamp, vowing to search for one in the morning.

But this time I had been fully awake when my visitor settled onto the bed, and I was better able to gauge the give in the mattress. It confirmed my initial feeling that this was a being somewhat larger than my sister but certainly not as huge as a bear. It could not be the white bear.

I thought for a moment of trying to speak to the figure but had a strong sense that I should not. Something mysterious was happening, and I felt that the sound of my voice would be jarring and wrong.

Again, the visitor did not move and stayed well away from me. And again I felt my tension drain. As I was drifting toward sleep, I even had the sensation of comfort, almost like I was at home sleeping beside my sister.

And once again the next morning, my visitor was gone.

Father

FOR MY THIRD JOURNEY I headed due south. My previous two had been north and northwest. Soren was eager for me to explore to the south, as there were so many areas there that remained uncharted.

In the course of mapping the lands I traveled through, I spoke to many local inhabitants, asking them about towns, rivers, and lakes, and the best routes between this point and that. Always at the end of our conversations, I would throw in a casual question about white bears, saying I had heard they were occasionally seen about and had any passed through of late. I dared not ask whether anyone had seen a white bear and a young girl traveling together, for I would surely be thought mad. Even my innocent question about white bears raised eyebrows, especially the farther south I went. A white bear? This far south? their faces would seem to say.

Though I had my work to occupy me, I was still beside myself with worry about Rose. Every dead end, and every blank look at my queries, sent me deeper into despair.

But in a small town not far from the seacoast, I finally had luck.

I came across a gentleman leading two heifers along a country road. We bade each other good day, he gazing with curiosity at the pad of paper and other tools I had been using to mark the road. We conversed for a moment, as I explained that I was a mapmaker, then casually I trotted out my usual query about whether he or anyone he knew had ever seen a white bear in the vicinity.

"Only the likes of Sig Everhart has ever claimed to see bears, and that's only when he's paid one too many visits to the wine barrel," the man responded with a laugh.

"Ah yes, wine can make us all see things." I laughed with him, but my interest quickened. "And where might I find this Master Everhart?"

"Lives in town," the man replied, cocking an eyebrow at me.

"I'd be obliged if you could direct me," I said.

And the man did, saying, "Sig's a good fellow, except for his weakness for wine."

But I was already hastening along the road to town. I quickly tracked down the man in his barn, where he was halfheartedly grooming a scrawny horse. He was clearly nursing a painful hangover.

I was not in the mood for tackling the subject sideways, so I just came right out and asked, "Have you seen a white bear in the past month or so?"

He frowned, and said suspiciously, "Ah, after a bit of fun, are you, stranger? Who put you up to it? Asa? Or Jonah?"

Impatient, I told him that no one had sent me and that I just needed to know the answer to my question.

Sig Everhart looked at me, then turned aside and spat into the hay. "Saw a white bear—last full moon, I think it was. Past midnight. I had lost my way in the woods outside town. Mind you, I was drunk as a horned owl. But I saw it, I swear. And it had summat riding on its back."

My heart felt like it would pound its way out of my chest. I grabbed the man's arms with my hands. "Which way was it going? How fast did it travel? Could you see what was on its back?"

He pulled away from me, looking wary. "Probably naught more than a ... What do you call them?...Hallucination. Brought on by the drink. Haven't been that soused since. Although last night I came close..."

"Please," I said, my voice cracking. "Just tell me." The man must have sensed my desperation, for he held up a placating hand. "Sure, sure. Well, whatever it was, hallucination or not, it was moving fast. But it had slowed down, to pick its way over Rilling Creek. And it was heading south. Could see naught of what rode its back. Could have been dirt even, or leaves. Or the wine.. ." he added with a grimace, putting his hand to his temple.

That was all I could get from the hungover Sig Everhart, but it was enough to give me my first spark of hope in a long while.

In my own mind I had no doubt that what the man had seen was my Rose riding on the back of the white bear. And so I found my way to Rilling Creek and from there headed south.

But days turned to weeks, and I could find no other trace of Rose and the white bear. I combed each village, asking everyone I saw. I roamed the woods, the meadows.

Finally I came to the sea, the farthest south I could go. I had combed the coastland, east and west, asking everyone I met, knocking at the doors to hundreds of strangers' homes. And so I stood by the water's edge and stared over the waves. It had been more than two months since I had left home, and the only clue to Rose's whereabouts had been from a drunken sot. But it was a slender thread of hope and I clung to it like a drowning man.

Rose

I LOOKED IN VAIN for a striker; I could not find even a flint or a bit of iron. I tried fashioning something for myself. But nothing worked. When nighttime came (or at least what could be considered nighttime in the castle), I could find no way to illuminate the utter blackness of my bedroom, no matter what I tried. Candles, oil lamps—all were extinguished the moment before my visitor arrived. Night after night it happened, the unlightable darkness followed by the give in the mattress, and the odd thing was, I grew used to it.

I decided it was an enchantment. And that I wasn't meant to see who, or what, my visitor was.

One night I did try speaking out loud to my visitor, but my tongue felt overlarge in my mouth and my voice came out hoarse and unintelligible. And what was there to say, really? There was such an air of wrongness about it, as if I were violating some sacred code or rule, that I did not try again. At any rate, there was no response to my croaking, not even a rustle of a sheet.

One or two times I was overtaken by the strong desire to reach over across the bed and touch whatever it was, to see if my fingers would encounter skin or fur or ... But that, too, felt strictly forbidden, even more than talking, and somehow I knew I must not risk it.

Yet I never stopped trying to guess who my visitor was. I came to believe that it was the white bear. His smaller size was due to the fact that he had shed his fur for the night, which would also explain the lack of bulk. From riding on his back, I knew just how deep and heavy the bear's coat was. And this theory fit with something I had noticed—that the figure next to me often shivered, pulling the covers up close and tight as if to warm himself. I couldn't imagine just what the bear would look like without fur, but the idea didn't repulse me. Instead it made me feel sympathy for him.

With time, life at the castle took on a routine. I measured my hours by the number of feet of weaving I had accomplished and by the grumblings of my stomach, and I measured my days with a calendar of sorts I made from a piece of fabric. Each day I put one stitch in the fabric. I changed the color of thread when I had counted thirty stitches. For exercise I walked the halls of the castle. I grew to know by heart every doorway, every painting on the wall, every inch of every rug. And one day I discovered something that made my imprisonment in the castle easier to endure.

Behind a dark-hued tapestry at the end of a dimly lit hall on the top floor, I found a door. The door opened onto a small, winding staircase, which was not lit. I went and got a candle, and climbed the stairs. At the top, which must have been the highest point of the castle, I found a tiny window. I could see little through it—just the sky and a lone tree branch—and could open the thick glass pane only about an inch. But the opening gave me the faintest taste of fresh air, as well as a sense of night and day beyond that which was provided by the lamps and candles of the castle. I visited that window nearly every day.

Another place I went each day (other than the weaving room) was the room I called the library. Most of the books were in Fransk, a language I knew because my mother had taught it to me as a child, though I was not fluent.

There were also books in Latin, which I knew very slightly from our family bible, and I even found two books written in Njorden. One of them, to my delight, was a book of the old stories like the ones Neddy used to tell me, the ones with Freya and Thor and Odin and Loki.

The white woman and man kept things in the castle running smoothly. They provided me with delicious, nourishing meals. They kept lamps and fires lit in the rooms I used, and tidied up after me and the white bear (whose only bad quality I could see was his shedding; I'd occasionally come across tufts of white fur stuck to the edges of furniture). They did all this without my seeing them, except for now and then, and those times they would always hurry away. The door to the kitchen was kept locked, and the few times we came face-to-face, the language difference made it impossible to understand each other.

The white bear visited me daily as I worked the loom. Usually it was in the afternoon and he would lie on the rug near me. I took to talking to him, though he rarely responded. I would tell him of my family, of life on our farmhold, and of the places I had explored beyond the farm. I would also tell him stories, both from my memory of the ones Neddy had told me and those from the Njorden book I had found.

I didn't know what he thought of my chatter, but I came to believe he liked the sound of my voice. If I was in a quiet mood, he would raise his head expectantly, as if waiting for me to start talking.

I grew used to his presence, and his sheer immensity no longer distracted me. A wordless communication developed between us. I could read his mood by the way he held his head, the small sounds he made, and even the way his fur lay on his body. Much of what I understood about him I saw in his eyes, those deep, expressive black eyes. I sensed something almost human in him, a thin, wavering strain of thought and feeling that was decidedly nonanimal. I believed it was where his limited ability to speak came from.

I wondered if at one time he had been either all animal or all human, and then those two elements of him were mingled, though clearly the animal in him had become the stronger and that was why words were so difficult.

There were times I sensed he hated that nonanimal flicker inside him, wished he could obliterate it altogether. And there were times I felt he clung to it for dear life. There were also a few times that I felt that this barely perceptible flicker was the only thing that kept him from ripping me to shreds or devouring me whole.

On one occasion I was coming out of my room on my way to the loom. I had just bathed and my face was flushed from the heat of the water I had bathed in. The white bear was standing just outside the door, and I nearly ran into him.

I heard a low growl coming from deep in his throat, and I glanced up into his eyes. To my horror they were blank, almost unrecognizable, with a terrible hunger in them. I stepped back, my heart thudding in my chest. He bared his teeth, something he'd never done before, and the growl grew louder. He took a step forward.

Without thinking I darted backward into the room, slamming the door behind me.

Desperately my hand scrabbled for a key or lock, but there was none. I pressed my back against the door, knowing how futile the effort was, given the enormous strength of the white bear. Batting down a door would be child's play to him. I heard a scratching sound on the door, then a sudden unearthly roar, like that of a creature in indescribable torment.

The roar echoed for a moment, then all was still. I waited a very long time before venturing out of my room again.

After I finished the weaving of the meadow from home, I moved on to a design from one of the stories I'd read in the Njorden book. It was a harsh tale about the trick Loki played on Idun, the guardian of the golden apples that ensured immortality to the gods. My weaving depicted Idun in the place the terrible giant Thiassi had taken her—a cavernous hall lit by columns of fire that burst from the earth.

When I was finished I was well pleased. I had intended both pieces as wall hangings, inspired by the tapestries on the walls of the castle. But though there was no fault or mistake in either, when I gazed at them side by side I began to feel dissatisfied with both. The first was lovely to look at, but it had no feeling to it. It was a pretty scene, remote and at a distance. The second piece had an anger to it that made me feel unsettled and unhappy.

I decided to take a rest from weaving to work on another kind of project instead. So I set about repairing my torn cloak. It was the last thing Neddy had given me, and if I was ever allowed to return home, I would need my "compass." Strangely, I gave no thought to making a new cloak. The old one was a link to my life back home, and I didn't want to break that link despite the lie that was woven into it.

Using the castle's good, strong thread and sharp needles, I quickly mended the cloak. And the white bear watched me, as he always did. When I came to the part of the wind rose where Father had hidden the truth, I felt tears prick my eyes. I thought of my father, of the pain I must have caused him with my anger. He may have been wrong to go along with Mother's lie, but he had done so reluctantly. I remembered the name that Father had called me in his heart. Nyamh. And more tears fell.

"You are sad," came the deep hollow voice.

I jumped a little, because the bear had not spoken to me in a week or more. But then I nodded, wiping my face with the edge of the cloak.

"Why?"

And the words came tumbling out as I told the white bear the whole tale of the birth-direction lie. When I was done, we were both silent. Then he said, "Rose ... Nyamh ... East ... North ... West ... South ... You are..."

I laughed a little. "I am all of the directions?"

He nodded.

"Are you saying you think the whole birth-direction superstition is nonsense?"

"No." He sounded definite, but when I asked him to explain what he meant, he did not answer but lay with his eyes shut, as though the small amount of speaking he had done had worn him out.

I sat watching him, confused but no longer sad. Again, despite his size and despite the fact that he had taken me from my family and home, I felt stirrings of sympathy for him.

"Is Sara well?" I blurted out.

He opened his eyes halfway. "Yes." The word was expelled from his chest like an arrow pulled from a wound. And then he left the room.

I thought of Sara as I finished mending and cleaning the cloak. I was relieved to hear that she had recovered. And I believed it to be true; for some reason I could not imagine the white bear lying.

I took my mended cloak to my room, folded it neatly, and stored it in my pack from home. Then I returned to the weaving room and began to think about what I wanted to make next on the loom.

My eye had been caught by spools of gold, silver, and pearly moon-colored threads, and I suddenly decided to make a gown for myself. It was a ridiculous decision. I had never made any clothing that did not have some practical use, and there was certainly no call for ball gowns on a remote, impoverished farmhold. Nevertheless, I decided to do it. After all, there was nothing I needed. Everything—my lodging, food, drink—was being taken care of for me. So why not go ahead and make something thoroughly impractical?

At first I could not decide which of the shining threads to use. I was drawn most to the pearly moon-thread, as I called it, but the others were so lovely, too. Then I made an even more ridiculous decision. I would make three gowns. "Well, why not?" I said to myself. I had all the time in the world, and each color would make a beautiful gown.

I would start with the silver, then gold, leaving the moon-thread for last.

I felt a thrill of excitement as I cast the delicate yet amazingly strong silver thread onto the loom. It should have been difficult to work with, so fine were the strands, but because of the exquisite craftsmanship of the loom, it was not.

I would make the fabric first, I decided, then design a pattern later.

As I wove, my mind twirled pleasurably through dozens of possible dress designs. I knew little about the latest fashions, but there were pictures in the book of Njorden tales, and the gowns worn by Freya, Idun, and Sif were lovely.

The shimmering fabric took shape under my fingers and I was in awe of its beauty. The further I got, the more I began to have doubts about using it to make a dress for myself. It really was fitting only for a princess or some other grand lady, not the daughter of a poor farmer. If (no, when, I told myself firmly) I ever left the castle, there would be no place in my life for a gown made of silver fabric.

I decided I would sell it. Such a sumptuous gown would fetch a small fortune, and that kind of money would help pay back all our debts on the farm, or it could enable Neddy to go to Bergen or Oslo to do the scholarly work he had always yearned to do. It could even help set Father up in a mapmaking business of his own.

So I kept weaving and planning the design of the dress. And if I occasionally imagined myself wearing it ... Well, there was no harm in that.

When I had woven enough of the glittering silver fabric, I began work on the dress. I went slowly and carefully, unaccustomed as I was to handling such exquisite fabric, and I did not want to make any mistakes.

Because I had to concentrate while I was creating the gown, I did not talk as much to the white bear. As a result he seemed more restless and would not stay with me but would pad in and out of the room with a put-upon expression in his black eyes.

At last I finished. Shaking it out, I held the dress up. It was a simple design, falling to the floor in silvery folds from a high waistline. I decided I must try the gown on, telling myself I just needed to see that it hung right. Remembering the long mirror in my room, I hurried there, carrying the dress. A little nervously I slipped the gown on, my back to the mirror. When I turned around I barely recognized myself. I stared for a moment, then let out a laugh.

I looked ridiculous, like an awkward little girl trying on her mother's wedding dress. I made a face at myself in the mirror, then grinned, saying, "That's what comes of putting a fancy dress on a girl who belongs in muddy boots and torn cloaks."

I had enjoyed making the dress, anyway, and believed it would fetch a high price, so I launched right into the making of the next, this time using the gold thread. This thread, too, was extraordinary, no thicker than the filament of a spader's web, yet it was just as strong as the silver. I felt like I was working with the spun gold from fairy tales. The dress turned out to be more elaborate than the silver one, and just as lovely.

And so I came to the moon-thread. While I was making the fabric, I told the white bear the tale of the Maid of the North and of how Vaina the song maker tricked Seppo the sky maker into going to the frozen land by singing into creation a giant pine tree with a moon and stars in its branches. By the way the white bear held his head, and the expression in his eyes, I could see that he was listening intently.

I marveled as the fabric took shape on my loom. The gold and silver had been beautiful, but this was something extraordinary. It seemed from another world entirely, a world you might glimpse on a frozen, misty winter day with the northern lights blazing above. I remembered the first time I had seen the northern lights as a child. I was breathless with excitement, convinced I was seeing the way into a whole new land, or into Asgard itself, where Freya and Idun and the thunder god Thor lived.

I hadn't understood Father's logical explanation about the phenomenon of the aurora. To me it was sheer magic. And the fabric I had made looked almost as much like the northern lights as it did the moon. At once moon white, the cloth would come startlingly alive with pearly, rippling color when the light caught it in a certain way.

When the time came to design the gown, I didn't look at any books but let the fabric itself guide me.

I cut and stitched and pieced the gown with the greatest concentration. Then I found a spool of pearly moon-ribbon and a small bowl of pearly buttons I had not noticed before, and used them for the finishing touches. I barely noticed if the white bear was there in the room with me.

The moment I was done, and had sewed on the last pearly ribbon and button, I ran to my room so fast I was out of breath when I got there. And in my haste I forgot to shut the door behind me.

When I stood before the mirror in this dress, I did not laugh. For just a moment I saw myself as beautiful. And I smiled at my reflection. Dreamily I thought how I might put my hair up and wind a length of moon-ribbon through it.

Then I heard a noise. A gusty, sighing sound like I had heard once before, when I first came to the castle. I spun around and saw the white bear standing in the doorway.

I froze. I was afraid for the first time in a long while. We stared at each other. For what felt like an eternity, all I was aware of were those black eyes, fierce and sad, fixed on mine. Finally the white bear lowered his head. He kept it low for several moments. Then he raised it again, turned, and walked away and out of sight My cheeks were flushed and my heart beat fast. I crossed to the door and shut it. I noticed that my hands were shaking.

Quickly I took off the dress, my fingers trembling. I donned my old clothing. Next to the glory of the moon gown, my worn woolen dress looked particularly shabby. Instead of wasting time on impractical ball gowns, I should have been making sturdy new clothing for myself.

"Enough of fairy-tale moon dresses," I told myself firmly. But my face was still hot and I didn't know why.